Tubasaluki: Quoting music since 2003

Sometimes when I’m driving to work I like to think of creative and hopefully witty things to do and write about in this blog. The idea that I toyed with for awhile was doing a parody of Lost, in which it begins “Previously…on Tubasaluki.” This idea fell apart mainly because 1) thats as far as I got and 2) I sometimes get the feeling that I’m the only one of my friends that watches the show, which is sad, because Lost is awesome.

I digress.

Since I last left you, I have moved to Montana, started working, and, as the title suggests, partaken in a gatorade slushie.

I left Lake Stevens on a Monday with a fairly full truck and leaving behind one confused cat and one I would guess happy mother. Though, now that it will take her longer than 20 minutes to go to the grocery store, I can only imagine my departure as being bittersweet to some degree. I had chains with me, since the trip to Havre consists of 4 mountain passes. Snoqualmie was actually closed the morning I left, but opened again before I left. I did see a semi turned the wrong way on the other side of said pass, which would be really interesting if it didn’t slow down traffic to a crawl.

I stopped in Ellensburg to have lunch with one of my high school friends that I hadn’t seen in forever. I believe we determined it had been five years or so. Good times! Lots of catching up to do. I’m guessing we skipped over some of the minor details, but good times were had by all. Next stop..Spokane! I saw another high school friend. I like this having high school friends located along my route bit. Its quite nice. Quick, one of you move to Missoula and Great Falls!

After leaving Spokane, I traveled through Idaho (as always, watch out for orangoutangs). Idaho manages to squeeze two mountain passes into its 60 mile panhandle. I was very close to calling it a night in Wallace (I’m not a fan of driving at night) but a lack of the official hotel of Alan road trips (Super 8, for the record) and better road conditions kept me going onward. I got up and over the second pass with no problem, but with the snow starting to fall, I called it a night in St. Regis. The goal was Missoula for the night, and as my friend Nick so helpfully pointed out when I logged online that night, St. Regis was not Missoula. After deciding against Seppuku, I went to bed.

The next day, it was smooth sailing for the ever dirtier truck and I. The most trouble I had was getting into an Arby’s parking lot. (Sidebar: My family always stops at the Arby’s in Ellensburg. I had always heard rumors that there was a town past the Arby’s, but it had been awhile since I’d seen it. Somewhere around 5 years. Anyway, between eating at non-Arby’s restaurant in Ellensburg, and the fact that Havre doesn’t have one, I made sure to stop at one in Great Falls). The second day was very uneventful and I got into Havre at around 5:00.

Flash forward (fun fact: this rambling blog post is written better than that show, which has taken a great concept and killed it by repeating every single line, usually three or four times). to Wednesday. My dad and uncle came. They went to Salem to get my stuff, which was nice. Other than a melt from Five Brothers, I wasn’t to keen on going back there so this worked out nicely. Dad and Rick had themselves quite the adventure, including blizzard conditions one day. Should Dad ever fire up his own blog, he can give you all the details. (You should be chuckling at that notion.)

With things unpacked and somewhat settled into…it was time to work! Hooray employment! Thursday was Day 1, and as a lot of Day 1s entail, I watched other people do their work. Enthralling! I’ve picked up on things fairly quickly, since this is the third station I’ve been at to use Audio Vault and second one to use my audio editing crack, more commonly known as adobe audition. Mmmm…fix transient feature.

At this time, I have a fairly limited roll. Voice tracking an on air shift, doing some production. I voice (but do not write) a couple of sportscasts each day. As I get more into it, I’ll be originating some stories (both news and sports) and will get to call some ballgames as well. Once that happens, I’ll let you know.

I have now been in Montana for nearly two weeks and have yet to experience above freezing temperatures. This is not bad, since I work inside and utilities are included in my rent. Its actually kind of awesome, because of Gatorade slushies. Here’s how to make one.

Ingredients:
One (1) bottle Gatorade
One (1) Vehicle

Wait for outside temperatures to become freezing. Place bottle inside vehicle. Leave overnight. Serve whenever you want.

I love Gatorade slushies, though admittedly, they turn out better when the temperature is closer to 32 than 0. (or closer to 0 and not -17.778, for my Australian friends).

Overall, I’m enjoying things. I like the stations where I’m at. I have family relatively near Havre, there are mountains here. I saw a couple of deer outside the station window the other day. It just needs to warm up so I can run outside. May have to hop on a treadmill soon.

So draw, little piggy, better watch out for number one.
(I fear there’s a bad wind blowing through there),

Alan
(lyric posted for rocking purposes…live version is the best)